The City of St. Louis is awash in vacant property. Almost 6% of housing stock - 7,663 buildings - is vacant. Add 12,524 vacant lots and St. Louis is third nationally in vacant property. Roughly 75% of these vacancies are situated in the region's poorest neighborhoods. Increasingly, the links between vacant properties and deleterious effects for neighboring residents have been documented: vacant properties increase opportunities for crime, make residents feel less safe, and negatively impact the health of neighbors. Conversely, rehabilitation of vacant property presents opportunities for improving economic conditions in low-income neighborhoods through job creation and increasing affordable housing opportunities at a time when St. Louis is facing a critical housing shortage. Missouri law provides place-based nonprofit organizations, like neighborhood associations and community development corporations, a variety of legal tools to address problems associated with vacant nuisance property and to return abandoned parcels to productive use. As part of its strategic plan to improve the lives of low-income Missourians through direct and systemic legal advocacy, Legal Services created Neighborhood Advocacy in 2018 to bring vital legal resources to distressed neighborhoods to stabilize housing and return vacant property to productive use through targeted, place-based pro bono. This CLE will share how a combination of litigation and transactional lawyering, focused at the neighborhood level, can empower neighborhoods to reverse decades-old disinvestment trends and create neighborhoods of economic opportunity that better serve the needs of the low-income residents who live there.

This session is designed to empower legal professionals with the skills and knowledge needed to identify and manage cases that have the potential to effect widespread change. This training covers effective strategies for spotting impactful cases, the nuances of handling complex litigation, and the best practices for navigating the legal and procedural challenges that accompany such cases. Participants will gain valuable insights into building a case that not only succeeds on its own merits but also sets a precedent for future legal standards and reforms.

This session will familiarize the attendee with the issues around license suspension for fees and fines. The session will then look at the national scene for making policy change in this area and how that plays out at the local level. Panelists will discuss states where this change has gone well and others where change was defeated or watered down. Attendees will leave with ideas that will help them take a look at the process in their states and make room for policy change and/or strategies for working within the systems in place now.

Section 1983 is a powerful tool to hold civil rights violators accountable. However, like Liam Neeson, it takes a particular set of skills. This panel will highlight the key considerations for litigators when bringing such a claim, including proper parties, venue, relief, and legal & practical obstacles.

Many legal services organizations are interested in deepening their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This conversation will provide perspectives around best practices in this area from within the legal services community, highlight innovative programs and initiatives from the private sector, and discuss how organizations can continue to operationalize these principles after Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

The session will focus on the psychological factors that can impede the effectiveness of legal aid, offering insights into how cognitive biases and decision-making processes affect client interactions and case outcomes. Participants will learn strategies to overcome these barriers, enabling them to provide more impactful legal support to those in need.

Medicare has a robust home health benefit for qualified individuals that includes skilled care as well as aides for personal care activities. But the reality on the ground paints a different picture, particularly for beneficiaries with long-term disabilities. The inability of older, disabled adults to access Medicare-covered home health services affects individuals who are more likely to be members of a racial or ethnic minority group, to have lower incomes, and to be in poorer overall health compared to people without disabilities. This presentation will discuss advocacy efforts to ensure that people with long-term disabilities can access the home health benefits that Medicare promises.

• Upon completion, participant will be able to understand the barriers facing older adults with limited English proficiency in accessing health care and how the 2024 Final Rule's language access provisions implementating Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act addresses these barriers.
• Upon completion, participant will be able to represent older clients with diverse needs including: (1) grandparents caring for children/guardianship, (2) consumer practices that disproportionately affect older adults who have limited English proficiency, and (3) probate issues unique to reservations.
• TBD

Building good technology to administer public benefits systems is HARD. Most government agencies are not adequately prepared to design and oversee these projects, or to even manage vendors in this space. This session will address some types of "good" technology and processes that government agencies should follow, and will address strategies that involve litigation leverage and more collegial relationship building. We will also discuss one of the newer technologies that has affected almost every system: digital identity verification.

While racial justice litigation and advocacy has never been an easy undertaking, the work has become increasingly difficult because of last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision finding the use of certain race-conscious admissions policies in college admission decisions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Not only has this decision led states to ban DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives from higher education, but even disparate impact regulations of federal agencies have come under attack by litigation and rule-making petitions filed by Attorney Generals of several "Red" states. This panel will cover some of these recent developments and discuss how they could affect litigation and non-litigation advocacy strategies on behalf of low-income communities of color, as well as ongoing efforts to make legal aid workplaces more equitable and inclusive places to work.

"The right to counsel in civil cases is both a matter to be litigated and creates opportunities for additional strategic litigation and advocacy. This panel will discuss the opportunities for and obstacles to those efforts, from both a theoretical and practical lens."